Themes, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

I've been pretty impressed with the iTheme series (found at www.ithemes.com).

These are premium designs that aren't free, but the designs are great as well as their video tuitorials.

The have one theme named Flexx that can be completely customized and has over 1,000 layout options.

iThemes also has great support.

I just uploaded my first theme from iThemes and will start customizing it tomorrow. This is in fact my first WP website. Will keep everyone posted on how it goes!

Tom

As I am just starting my wordpress site what are the best free and pay theme sites to look at? There must be a lot out there. Thanks ~Nancy

Hi Nancy,

For the small investment in a Premium Theme you'll save yourself a ton of time and headaches. With the premium themes you generally get a real solid product with support.

For my website business I licensed all my themes from iThemes because of their design talent, theme selection, solid products and great support.

As I find great premium themes from other companies, I'll look into buying a developer's license for those themes to further expand my theme selection. So if you find some great ones, please let me know.

Also, make sure you use a hosting company that can properly handle WordPress. Many hosting companies today support WP, but most -- not very well. I had to switch from the hosting company I used for years for static websites because my WP sites were taking up to a minute to load each page. Once I switched to Bluehost, my pages started loading in about 7 seconds.

Tom

I am with BlueHost! How do I know which theme is the best for my business? I don't want to go just on color or placement. ~Nancy

I recently switched to Thesis and am migrating every site I work with to this theme.

On top of being easy use, there is a groundswell of sexy geeks who are excited about this theme and who are generously distributing their customizations and tutorials. So, I figure there is going to be only more and more information out there that I can use to rock my websites.

I based my Northwest residential architecture blog off of Thematic. It is a free theme that is very well documented and supported.

It has tons of widgitized areas that allow for a bunch of customization. There are both free and "premium" child themes. It has great tutorials on customization as well.

It has an active forum where you can post questions. The theme's author often answers those questions within hours.

I too am using Thesis theme, but have only started playing with it.

I'm currently building two website in Thesis. It does have many cool features and a more open and airy look. However, I'm not impressed with the way you have to install a header image. The image has to be added into an ftp file and code has to be added into their custom css folder. The process for adding a custom background image is equally awkard. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they create a browse/upload feature within the dashboard as iThemes and others have.

Bob - Another vote for the Thesis Theme from DIY Themes. Some of our clients have even moved their whole site to wordpress (because of the CMS), and used Thesis because of the absolute versatility.

While it's not too great for those that don't know anything about coding, it IS easy to learn. And once you know it, the sky is the limit!

As for the SEO and options panel, you've got it in one. Adding personalized title tags and descriptions is insanely easy.

Tom - there's more than one way to catch a fish! If you download the Thesis OpenHook plugin, you don't have to go into your core files through ftp. The only thing you do have to do is upload the image, which you'd have to do with pretty much any image you're putting on a site.

I ADORE Studio Press Themes and almost all the blogs I build are on one of these themes. Brian just launched a new magazine theme!

I used to use Free themes but found them to be a major headache when designing for a client. Now I work exclusively on Studio Press, iThemes, Thesis and have just started working with The Affiliate Themes. I have the developer rights on all these as that offers the best value and access.

I just updated my main site with one of the Studio Press upgraded themes - here's my site on the "Church" theme by Studio Press

http://www.InternetMarketingOnaShoestring.com

I'd like to know what themes others are using as Membership Sites as I've been making a major study and application of the http://www.wishlistMembershipPlugin.com

I'd be very interested in seeing or hearing about what others are doing with Membership sites.

D'vorah

The appeal of the Thesis theme is the ease with which novices and pros alike can modify it with options panel and other easy to find access points (differently than with most other themes).

The ante has now been upped with Headway theme http://www.headwaythemes.com which appears to be even easier (for those of us who'd rather not go straight into the code). Check out some of the videos on the home page.

I haven't tried the theme yet, but the approach is a significant drag-and-drop advancement with new items to easily access in menus.

Design-wise, perhaps it's more typographically focused, which has a much appeal to me but perhaps not to those who want instantaneous decorative results. It might be a little spartan out of the box...

Anyway looks like a very promising interface.

Bob, forgive my lack of... but what is this? (http://biznik.com/images/buttons/post_comment.gif?1247577805)

I’ve done a bunch of sites in iThemes Flexx which is exceptional for all the functionality which so many other premium themes don’t have. You probably won’t have to mess around with the ftp files or html code if you go with Flexx. Here’s my most recent Flexx site: http://www.arzika.com/

I’ve also done several sites in Thesis. Overall, I have come to like Thesis the best because there’s even more customization that can be done. However, it does take a while to come up to speed on their method of customization which needs to be done in the ftp files with html code. They market their customization as “if you can cut and paste you can do it”. But generally it’s a bit more complex. Here’s my most recent Thesis site that’s at 95% finished: http://www.confluencedigital.com/

I have a client now interested in a Woo theme. Anyone have any experience with Woo?

Tom

Great site Bob. Was that one done with the Woo theme?